Reflections after reading Harriet Jacobs’ Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl
Slavery was the original American sin.
I don’t know anyone who justifies race-based slavery, but I have known seemingly good folk with more than a dollop of sympathy for the Confederacy. Growing centralized government makes “states’ rights” look good, and self-determination is a popular modern cause.
If the South wanted to be free, why use brutal force to bring it back within the Union?
Lincoln makes the case for the Union better than anyone, but the slaves themselves wrote eloquent testimonies as to why the Confederacy does not deserve a moment of Christian pity. Harriet Jacobs (who wrote under the pseudonym “Linda Brent”) witnesses to the incompatibility of slavery with the Christian ethic of love. Her intelligent, calm account makes hash of the idea that there was anything ennobling about the “peculiar institution.”
The Old South is dead—for which all Americans should feel profound gratitude. The reason is instructive to some of our current political debates. Some crimes against humanity are so horrible that they taint every person associated with them. They bring down brutal judgment from God on any nation that tolerates their presence.
Take an evening and purge your soul of any sympathy for the Southern cause by reading the profoundly Christian story of an enslaved woman: Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl. There is no way for me to describe the ugliness of what was done to a Christian, to a woman, to a human, in the name of race based slavery. Often the evil was done by professing Christians who abused their religion as a cover for their abuse. Sadly, her story is not unique, but representative of hundreds of years of torment tolerated first by colonial Britain and then by the American Constitution.
A certain sort of conservative has too much sympathy for the Lost Cause, but no Cause that defends the institutionalization of violence and evil that slavery produced in the entire South deserves pity. For a Christian one of the most sickening aspects of Jacobs’ powerful book are the twisted justifications of immoral conduct by believers.
Make no mistake: Americans had created an institution that was peculiar to their particular time. It depended on the pseudo-scientific notion of “race” which is utterly incompatible with Christian understandings of humankind.
Race-based slavery is an assault on Christian anthropology, because it denies the basic equality of all human beings before God. While a person may be given a different function in the divine economy, this difference must be based on real distinctions and be implemented with charity. Slavery was based on an irrelevant distinction (skin color) made important through self-serving lies.
It had no basis in history, biology, or religion.
Slavery based on economics or warfare made a certain kind of sense for ancient times, but race-based slavery is utterly intolerable. Racism made a child of God less than human. The only possible moral justification for race based slavery collapsed the moment a slave was baptized. The only possible economic benefit from slavery became impossible with the application of the Golden Rule to slaves who wanted to be free.
How could a Christian brother deny liberty to a brother or sister who longed for it?
Enslaved women faced unique problems as this book’s powerful testimony makes clear.
Humanity cannot be trusted with the absolute power of one human being over another. Christians traditionally favor small government for this very reason, but there is no use keeping a tyrant out of the Capitol if one creates a worse one on the plantation. Limited government applies to family and to church as well as to the state.
Prelates and patriarchs cannot be trusted any more than potentates.
Nothing can justify the Southern cause, because the taint of race-based slavery pollutes the noblest motivations. Good men like Robert E. Lee should have known better, because Christian moral understanding had advanced to the point where there was no excuse for a reasonable man to miss the point. Of course, courage was shown in an ignoble cause and brave men died for an evil system, but that only makes it worse.
Slavery, hundreds of years of slavery, was so horrible it taints the American experiment. It made a mockery of the ideals in the Declaration. Our marvelous Constitution was polluted by slavers who desired votes in Congress for their slaves without acknowledging their humanity.
It is no shock that those who profited by slavery justified it. More horrifying in Jacobs’ book are those Northerners who tolerated it, profited from it, and allowed themselves to be used by it.
Why should we care today? We should care because 1865 was not so long ago . . . and Southern states wickedly imposed slavery in all but name for many for decades longer. Segregation could only be sustained by the force of law, and the law was misused in its name even in my lifetime.
What is worse is that this nation, so long hurt by the sin of slavery does so little to end the slave trade globally. Today Christian brothers and sisters are enslaved in the Sudan. All the many horrors, and more, that Jacobs wrote about are happening now. Some of the nations that perpetuate or justify such abuse receive huge amounts of American aid.
It is a crime so horrible; it taints all near it. Direct support for any regime that is implicated in the slave trade must end. The United States is not called to be the world’s policeman or pastor, but we are also not called to be the paymasters for slavers. Britain decided not to support Southern slavers for cheap cotton and we should deny any aid to soft-on-slavery sheiks with oil.
Advocacy of abolition is a particular moral obligation on Americans. Support for slavers or their willing accomplices would fatally taint any global work we do.
August 30th, 2010 | 5:15 pm | #1
This column is a perfect example of seeing through the lens of history and not realizing that the lens is there. Slavery became wrong when the Confederacy lost the war, it was as simple as that. If the Confederacy had won, the discussion would be under radically different terms, like “Was it really necessary to hang all the Abolitionists?”
Oh, and one other thing. The British ultimately chose not to intervene because there was no way that their navy could survive in the same water with the Union ironclads. The morality of slavery played a small role in their decision, but the prospect of losing a war was the bigger one. A commission of the British Admiralty, in 1863, told the Prime Minister exactly that.
August 30th, 2010 | 5:30 pm | #2
“Slavery became wrong when the Confederacy lost the war, it was as simple as that.”
No, it is not as “simple as that.” Might does not make right.
August 30th, 2010 | 5:36 pm | #3
“Slavery became wrong when the Confederacy lost the war, it was as simple as that.”
Really? That’s like saying murder became wrong when the murderer was convicted in a court of law.
What a boneheaded, amoral statement.
August 30th, 2010 | 6:18 pm | #4
Abortion is worse than slavery.
“Advocacy of abolition is a particular moral obligation on Americans. Support for slavers or their willing accomplices would fatally taint any global work we do.”
Change to:
Advocacy of abortion is a particular moral obligation on Americans. Support for abortion or their willing accomplices would fatally taint any global work we do.
August 30th, 2010 | 6:21 pm | #5
Abortion is worse than slavery.
“Advocacy of abolition is a particular moral obligation on Americans. Support for slavers or their willing accomplices would fatally taint any global work we do.”
Change to:
Advocacy against abortion is a particular moral obligation on Americans. Support for abortion or their willing accomplices would fatally taint any global work we do.
Abortion is so horrible it taints all.
August 30th, 2010 | 11:06 pm | #6
“one of the most sickening aspects of Jacobs’ powerful book are the twisted justifications of immoral conduct by believers.”
The sordid history of the church will make any reasonable person highly suspicious of contemporary Christianity. Take a step back and try to think: what will sicken our grandchildren? What will they clearly recognize as our “twisted justifications?”
My own suspicions include the church’s treatment of gays and lesbians, and the widespread Christian support of the death penalty. Even today we see the younger generation largely sickened by the proposed “Christian” legislation in Uganda, under which gays would be executed.
Several of you are publicly promoting the twisted justifications that will sicken your grandchildren.
August 30th, 2010 | 11:34 pm | #7
Dr. Reynolds,
Would you say they same about America since 1973 (i.e. that it deserves no sympathy) in light of Roe v. Wade? In other words, does the presence of institutionalized evil in a nation make all types of support for the nation wrongheaded?
I guess I”m just trying to understand the structure of your claims here. I think race-based slavery was a grievous evil, and I admire Robert E Lee and Stonewall Jackson as godly, Christian men. Your post makes me think that you would argue that such sentiments are incompatible.
Thoughts.
August 30th, 2010 | 11:37 pm | #8
Slavery was awful–but everywhere else in the western world it was ended without a war costing as many innocent lives as the Civil War did. So sad that the US couldn’t have found a way to end the scourge peacefully as so many other countries did. We should care about slavery today not because of 1865 because in many places it is still being practiced and slavery should be exposed and ended in countries all over the world.
August 30th, 2010 | 11:53 pm | #9
Amie,
Slavery was then and is now, a huge problem among Muslim nations and many others.
There are more slaves now in the world than at any previous time.
C. Ehrlich, how have Christians treated gays badly? By insisting that the Bible is correct when it condemns the practice?
Where does the Bible condemn capital punishment? It doesn’t.
I think TUAD has it right. Abortion eclipses just about everything.
August 31st, 2010 | 12:10 am | #10
The church’s treatment of gays? That’s a difficult thing to define. That almost sounds like you’re lumping all Christians together. There have been a variety of approaches to that particular moral aberration.
Plenty of churches, by the way, strongly oppose the Ugandan law you speak of. I myself wrote about it here last year. That said, I do take the conservative stance that homosexuality is a sin, just like adultery or pornography, etc.
Ehrlich, you’re spreading anti-Christian hate. Stop implying one cannot be both a reasonable student of church history and also a Christian. When you say all members of a certain group are deluded/unreasonable, that is hate speech. Yes, I know Dawkins did it, but that doesn’t make it OK.
August 31st, 2010 | 12:42 am | #11
Gary Simmons and Daryl,
Just as many contemporary Christians refuse to endorse the twisted justifications for immoral attitudes towards gays and lesbians, many antebellum Christians refused to endorse the twisted justifications for slavery.
My claim, however, is that like their antebellum forebears, Christians today are almost certainly still making twisted justifications for their own immoral behaviors and attitudes (even if they now all oppose chattel slavery). The sordid history of the Church teaches us this: just as we clearly recognize the moral blindness of our forebears, our descendants will recognize ours. Just as we are sickened by the twisted “Christian” justifications for slavery, our grandchildren will be sickened by our twisted “Christian” arguments for ________ .
Bearing the lessons of history in mind, reasonable Christians will try to avoid shaming their grandchildren, even if this requires suspecting the church of moral blindness, and taking a critical attitude towards contemporary Christian values.
August 31st, 2010 | 1:17 am | #12
“C. Ehrlich, how have Christians treated gays badly? By insisting that the Bible is correct when it condemns the practice? Where does the Bible condemn capital punishment? It doesn’t.”
Relative to Daryl’s arguments here, some of those “twisted” Christian justifications for slavery looked quite strong.
August 31st, 2010 | 3:49 am | #13
C. Ehrlich: “Take a step back and try to think: what will sicken our grandchildren? What will they clearly recognize as our “twisted justifications?”
Okay. Took the step back and thought about it. What will sicken our grandchildren are the teachings and practices of liberal and emerger “Christians”. Liberals and Emergers who proclaim that Scripture does not teach that same-sex behavior is a sin; Liberals and Emergers who support abortion, oftentimes vehemently opposing pro-life Christians; Liberals and Emergers who declare that Scripture is errant, thus hollowing out, eviscerating, and undermining the Authority of Scripture whilst elevating faddish man-centered doctrines such as the UN Millenium Development Goals; and Liberals and Emergers who stridently preach a Social Gospel instead of the Gospel of Jesus’ Work on the Cross is what brings shame, mockery, derision, and ridicule to the Body of Christ.
Liberals and Emergers and those who condone them and their soul-destroying leaven is what will shame our grandchildren. Hopefully, our grandchildren will recognize the “twisted justifications” of Liberals and Emergers for what they are.
August 31st, 2010 | 8:43 am | #14
I think race-based slavery was a grievous evil, and I admire Robert E Lee and Stonewall Jackson as godly, Christian men.
Lee and Jackson may have been Christian men, but their actions in support of the Confederacy were ungodly and grievous error. Skill and bravery in support of evil are not virtues, and honor is not a particularly Christian characteristic– too often it replaces love.
August 31st, 2010 | 9:26 am | #15
[...] A challenge. [...]
August 31st, 2010 | 9:27 am | #16
[...] A challenge. [...]
August 31st, 2010 | 10:03 am | #17
Nickp,
One can acknowledge the actions of Lee and Jackson as sinful and still admire them. Jonathan Edwards owned slaves; I still admire the man.
Lee and Jackson’s reasons for fighting for the Confederacy had very little to do with slavery and everything to do with loyalty to family and state. Lee viewed slavery as a grievous evil as well and Jackson rankled some feathers by educating his slaves.
And drawing a disjunction between honor and love is odd, given Paul’s admonition to outdo one another in showing honor immediately following his exhortation to love (Romans 12-13).
And again, my fundamental question for Dr. Reynolds is about the structure of his claim. If race-based slavery is so “horrible that it taints all,” with the result that we cannot appreciate or admire anything about the Old South, then is the same true for America today, given the the horror of abortion?
August 31st, 2010 | 10:04 am | #18
If abortion is on par, or worse, in its heinousness with race based slavery, and if the logic of Mr. Reynold’s post here holds, I wonder why uprising in the streets isn’t morally justified or even obligated? Further, it would seem that our present country contains within it absolutely nothing to be admired, just like the Old South. Hyperbole? Or is it simply easier to knock the stupidity of the brutish Southerners who, it seems, are more adamant against the current evil of abortion than our big city, northern friends.
August 31st, 2010 | 10:07 am | #19
C. Ehrlich,
So what, exactly, are the immoral attitudes towards gays that you refer to?
And…in general, as relates to the post, let us be very very careful in condemning Christians in past eras, for systemic wrongs that we don’t have to deal with ourselves.
We have no idea what Jackson and Lee’s thought towards slavery were. And even if they got that wrong, it doesn’t write their whole lives off.
For the same reason I try and have patience for the Mennonites with whom I attend church, despite their attitudes towards the military and capital punishment.
August 31st, 2010 | 10:28 am | #20
This is what I wonder:
We, rightly, recognize that those slave-holders who so brutally treated the men and women in their care could not possibly be considered Christians (perhaps some were, but let’s not go there…)…and that by extension, those who supported their rights were, if Christian, skating on the edge of hell itself…
…and yet, we have no problem calling those folks “Christian” who vote for and support the Democratic party. A party which so openly, not only supports existing abortion laws, but pushes for more and more loosening of those laws. (I’m certainly not saying the Republicans are saints, but at least they don’t stand on that platform)
Take partial-birth abortion for instance, or those who, with legal sanction, allow babies who survive abortions, to die on the table.
How is not everything those folks do anti-Christian?
And how is not the average church-going Democrat not in the same place (or worse, I would argue) than Robert E. Lee?
And some still have the gall to give any credence to Nancy Pelosi and President Obama’s (not to mention Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton and all their followers) claims to be Christians…
So let us then rejoice when America falls, and disappears entirely, like the old south.
That was your point, right?
August 31st, 2010 | 10:52 am | #21
I think TUaD makes a good point here. It’s too easy to condemn chattel slavery and the Christians (in both the Union and Confederacy) who didn’t rise up violently against the institution now that such people are distant from us in history.
But what about abortion, which is indeed as bad if not worse than slavery, and all the Christians who are tepid and embarrassed when it comes to even non-violent protest against it. Should we treat our contemporaries as Dr. Reynolds suggests we think of immoral 19th century Christians?
This does not even get to questions of just war, which is simply assumed concerning the Civil War and one never even hears discussed. I grew up in the Northeast and even in high school history (my teacher was the best U. S. history teacher in the district) it was apparent that the legal mechanisms were suspect, that Lincoln himself was cynical concerning the “moral” issue (see Emancipation Proclamation), and that Sherman’s march was one of the first Western instances of “total war” which is unjust by the standards of the tradition.
It’s not that slavery is moral. It’s that two wrongs don’t make a right. Unfortunately, people generally only know the white-washed version of American history where George Washington could not tell a lie, Lincoln was a saint, and the U. S. spreads morality and freedom to foreign nations by bombing them into submission. But it’s not so simple, and it never was, even in 19th century America.
August 31st, 2010 | 11:13 am | #22
This is an excellent post. Thank you for writing it, Dr. Reynolds.
August 31st, 2010 | 11:48 am | #23
Joe Rigney:
It would probably be difficult to find anyone who is wholly without admirable characteristics. Presumably, and correct me if I am wrong, you admire Jonathan Edwards for his theological teaching or skill as a preacher. Edwards slave owning and defense of slavery does suggest an unfortunate blind spot and theological error which may have corrupted some of his teaching, but it wasn’t a primary focus of his teaching. In contrast most people seem to admire Lee and Jackson for their generalship, bravery and loyalty to the confederacy; the characteristics that people admire were deployed in defense of and are inextricably tied to a great evil. In my view, Lee and Jackson are probably no worse than, but no better than, Erwin Rommel. If Edwards’ fiery sermons had been primarily deployed in opposition to the abolitionists, then I’d view him as more like Lee and Jackson.
I’ll need to be convinced that “honor” as Paul uses the term in Romans 12:10 is the same as honor in the culture of the Confederacy. Paul says we should honor each other. Honor in contexts like the confederacy or WW II Japan seems to be personal honor which must be defended against insult. Personal honor seems more compatible with pride than humility.
August 31st, 2010 | 12:41 pm | #24
C. Ehrlich,
If someone says gays and lesbians should be enslaved because they are attracted to members of the same sex, then I think you have a much stronger argument. As it stands, it’s not nearly as compelling as you seem to think it is. Some Christians have disenfranchised homosexuals, but the issue is far more complex than slavery.
August 31st, 2010 | 1:00 pm | #25
Daryl: “I think TUAD has it right. Abortion eclipses just about everything.”
Albert: “I think TUaD makes a good point here. It’s too easy to condemn chattel slavery and the Christians (in both the Union and Confederacy) who didn’t rise up violently against the institution now that such people are distant from us in history.
But what about abortion, which is indeed as bad if not worse than slavery, and all the Christians who are tepid and embarrassed when it comes to even non-violent protest against it. Should we treat our contemporaries as Dr. Reynolds suggests we think of immoral 19th century Christians?”
Daryl and Albert, much thanks for the acknowledgment. I appreciate it.
The trajectory of the counter-argument is really captured by Joe Rigney:
“If race-based slavery is so “horrible that it taints all,” with the result that we cannot appreciate or admire anything about the Old South, then is the same true for America today, given the the horror of abortion?”
And to answer Joe’s question, I would have to say “Yes.” America’s legalization of the killing of unborn babies, legally sanctified sacrifices of unborn children to Molech, is so horrible and so heart-wrenching, and is such a foul stench to our Lord, that we as a country, as Americans, are justifiably reaping the socio-politico-cultural downgrade of what we have sown.
Perhaps Dr. Reynolds deliberately and knowingly wrote this post with the intention of eliciting comparisons between slavery and abortion, knowing that as awful as race-based slavery is, abortion is worse.
August 31st, 2010 | 3:06 pm | #26
Arguably, displacing the Indians was the original American sin. And, oddly, while making the obvious point that slavery was a very gross evil, you note without comment the question: “If the South wanted to be free, why use brutal force to bring it back within the Union?” Here is another question you may note: Was a war that cost the lives of 600,000 men –not a few of them draftees– the only way to bring an end to slavery?
August 31st, 2010 | 11:16 pm | #27
Nickp,
I admire Lee and Jackson for the same reasons I admire Edwards: because they were godly Christian men. I’d recommend “Call of Duty: The Sterling Nobility of Robert E. Lee” by Steve Wilkins for an introductory look at Lee.
As one example that defies the stereotype of Lee as a bigot: After the War, many in the South were bitter about the loss and often took out their animus on blacks. At one point during a church service, a black man walked down front to receive communion. Many in the congregation froze, unsure of what to do. Lee immediately walked down front and took communion, thus setting an example for the rest of the congregation. Stories like this could be multiplied.
And on the question of honor, I’d simply submit that the kind of honor present in the Old South was radically different than Japanese honor, because the concepts of honor in the Old South were birthed out of Christianity. However distorted such notions may have been in certain cases, or as distorted as they became during Reconstruction, I think that the ideas of honor and nobility present in the Old South (and other places) were and are admirable character traits.
August 31st, 2010 | 11:40 pm | #28
One can both wholeheartedly denounce the evils of slavery and still believe that Lincoln’s invasion of the Southern states was unconstitutional. The first is a basic moral question, and the second is a constitutional one. God clearly used Lincoln’s actions to bring an end to an evil system. However, that does not mean that his policies were constitutional.
A further point to make is that the Northern policy of “total war” constituted a radical departure from just-war theory as developed over hundreds of years by Christian thinkers. Destroying unoccupied civilian towns and cities to terrorize the Southern population would have appalled most Christian thinkers throughout history, and it justified many of the atrocities of the First and Second World Wars in the minds of the “Christian” nations.
September 1st, 2010 | 10:27 am | #29
Very, very well said. Thank you for this blog.
September 19th, 2010 | 4:01 am | #30
“A further point to make is that the Northern policy of “total war” constituted a radical departure from just-war theory as developed over hundreds of years by Christian thinkers.”
A departure from the theory, of Christian thinkers not the practice of Occidental soldiers. Just two generations before Napoleon’s men had fed themselves by plunder. Year after year, doing far more damage then Sherman did. Two wrongs don’t make a right, but calling it a departure is misleading.
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